Asexperia
Registered Senior Member
Does time exist?
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DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Indeed. That is the problem with this whole thread.
It's word salad. Everyone has their own pet idea of how they want to use words that already have meaning.
This accomplishes nothing except the self-stroking of egos.
As Albert put it when asked what relativity was, "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour, spend an hour with a hot blonde and it seems like a minute" or words to that effect.
That's just the way the cookie crumbles I suggest and has more to do with consiousness and desire then with time itself.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
As I said I was not critiquing your post itself.
My proposition is more of a probing nature.
My intuitive feeling is that time is emergent as a by-product of change or movement, i.e. events.
Obviously time (duration) must be involved in any kind of description of a chronological continuity of existence.
But it does appear that time is a variable and not a constant, except perhaps for Bohm's Pilot wave model, which may be interpreted as a moving block universe (the Wholeness) but curiously was not mentioned in Paddo's linked discussions.
We speak of an arrow of time which is always forward and I can absolutely agree with that. But curiously it always goes forward in all directions, which on the face of it seems contradictory.
But it would not be contradictory if we lived on the crests or in the troughs of spacetime waves but not inside the waves themselves. All events would be moving forward in time but also moving farther away in opposite directions from each other in space.
If we drop a pebble in a still body of water it becomes the center of an expanding series of circular waves and every point of the circumference of these waves moves relatively further away from every other point, especially at the edge (the largest circumference) of the wave function. The points at the exact opposite side of the center would be moving away from each other at the greatest speed and in opposite directions but each point themselves would be moving forward in time. A small boat would alternately ride a crest or follow a trough but always remain at the surface. A larger boat would only ride the crests, and even smaller boat would only ride in the troughs (which may be related to observations in the double slit experiment)
But at the scale of a relatively small body of water, we can actually count the series of wave fronts created by the dropping of the pebble in a smooth, as yet undisturbed water surface.
Trying to visualize this model with the BB at the center and the circular wave functions expanding away from the center at each point of the circumference, I get a picture of an expanding universe, where time is moving forward in all directions on a wavelike 2d plane of a sphere. This sphere needs not be uniform itself as long as the total circumference is 360 degrees.
It is interesting to note that Bohm's theory does propose "hidden variables" which is one of the main objection to his theory by mainstream science. But if true, could time be such a "hidden variable" caused by a "wave interference", in turn caused by the gravitational effects of massive objects within the greater Pilot Wave function, and thereby disturbing the otherwise unimpeded expansion of the wave itself.
The most interesting aspect of all this is that time appears to slows down depending on speed of movement of object. Why would this have to be so? Why would speed affect time at all if time were a part of a block universe where the past, present, and future are already mathematically determined.
Which would suggest that "hidden variables" such as wave interference patterns do indeed exist and make the future of everything uncertain, along with its associated time frames.
So, it seems to me that the existence, movement, change of objects in reality create their own subjective time, associated to that object only, because the future of each object itself is a variable, some of which can be measured, but some of which are hidden. Obviously some fundamental universal constants do exist as physically expressed in measurable patterns of behavior.
But then for anything moving @ "c" time stands still, which seems contradictory to a chronologyy of continued existence and movement, but which does allow us to see far back into the past.
But when we look into past we are actually looking backward to a smaller version (state) of the expanding universe.
We can look back in past time and observe the energetic emissions of objects which actually are no longer in existence. Is that due to the fact that time stands still for particles travelling @ "c"?
Obviously the continued existence of a star is not necessary for us to be able to observe the energy of the nova which caused the star to cease to exist, millions of years in the past.
So, considering these apparent incongruences, is it possible that time can only be associated to the properties and actions of individual objects or groups of objects which have the same properties and actions such as photons and electrons?
I am just musing and I don't have the knowledge to put this all together in a scientifically comprehensive model. They are just thoughts that occur to me randomly.
I don't claim to have any answers to these questions, but it must be admitted that science also has not quite solved this peculiar phenomenon of time and why time would or could "stand still" @ "c".
I believe this part can be explained not only in GR as a function of relativity, but also as a by-product of quantum change, which must have an associated time frame, even though, due to our limitations, quantum seems to happen instantaneously.
But I read somewhere that assuming a geometric coordinate model of the universe, when a quantum event occurs anywhere in the system, the entire coordinate system changes and the coordinate "vacated" by a quantum packet is immediately replaced by another quantum packet, which causes an apparently instantaneous cascade of quantum packets filling a "vacated" coordinates.
Which raises the question if quantum coordinates also expand along with expansion of space and the cascading replacement of quantum packets takes more time and in that process time would appear to slow down also. Of course, as we are part of the whole and subject to the same expansion, we would (could) never be able to measure the slowing down of time along with the expansion of space.
OK, can anyone make sense out of this thought salad?
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I tend to agree in the abstract, but for each living individual time is experienced differently. That's why we use watches, to keep track of actual time. But watches themselves slow down along with speed of movement. And in fact time itself seems to slow down with sufficient speed of movement. Thus time is not just associated with space but with speed as well. This is the curious part.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
From Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere#Geometric_properties
Can be found in the section named Dimensionality.
NotEinstein
Valued Senior Member
Please show me a photograph of a (mathematical) sphere. Not some bunch of atoms that only look spherical, but really aren't, but a real, genuine, perfect sphere. Then point me to its real curved 2d plane. Not "you can model its surface as a 2d plane", but a physical real curved 2d plane.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
And what does this have to do with Time?
And I have already stipulated that in reality there are no perfect spheres, but there are exotic spheres known as spheroids, IOW the center of the sphere is not necessarily equidistant to all points of the circumference, but when the aberrations are corrected, a perfect sphere where every point on the circumference is equidistant from the center is contained within the spheroid.
I believe certain manifolds are examples of exotic spheres.
And I have already stipulated that in reality there are no perfect spheres, but there are exotic spheres known as spheroids, IOW the center of the sphere is not necessarily equidistant to all points of the circumference, but when the aberrations are corrected, a perfect sphere where every point on the circumference is equidistant from the center is contained within the spheroid.
I believe certain manifolds are examples of exotic spheres.
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NotEinstein
Valued Senior Member
How should I know; you started going down this path with your post #1261.
Or parabola, or curved 2d planes.
Please show me a photograph of a spheroid.
And I'm not talking about spheroids using the archaic usage of the word ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spheroid : The word "spheroid" originally meant "an approximately spherical body", ...) but using the current mathematical definition.
Can you give one or more examples of such manifolds?
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
And as per Forum rules, I am trying to get back to addressing the OP subject of Time.
So, I am not going to help in further hijacking of the thread. Do your own research on spherical objects.
I did it for for my own enlightenment, but I am not your research assistant.
Because existence implies time, the question "does time exist?" can't be meaningful. It's exactly the same as the question "does time exist for any amount of . . . time?".
This has been pointed out in this thread some . . . time ago.
This has been pointed out in this thread some . . . time ago.
Not sure existence implies time
Existence implies existence
Continued existence translates to age
Age is not time
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I agree. You cannot measure time itself. It is an emergent by-product of duration of existence of something else.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
But you cannot measure Age with Age either. Age is measured in arbitrary units of time.
Was not aware was measuring age with age - was considering the observation of the duration of existence, and yes designating its age with arbitrary units
Probably a distinction without a difference
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The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.
http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/measurement-units/si-base-units/the-second
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According to the French Dictionnaire Larousse (1972), time is the measure of theduration of phenomena, and duration is the space of time that something lasts: four words—time, duration, space, last—that successive truisms fail to define
Abstract Time remains incomprehensible, as long as it is not rigorously defined
To define is to say what something is, but a scientific definition is not a rhetorical
exercise, because it must open the way to theoretical extensions. The transition
from phenomenon to concept made by the Dogon, the Mayans, the Hittites, and the Sumerians shows us how to define the first units of time. The main units, and time itself, will be defined in the same way. In order to define time, it is crucial that our definitions of the units of time should be consistent. It will be explained why the wording of the definition of the second proposed by the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (CGPM) is problematic. The non-phenomenology of time will be established. The difference between age, old age, aging, chronological age, and biological age will be explained. The nature of time will be described
The second cannot be the duration of 9,192,631,770 cesium cycles, because the
second is defined precisely in terms of cesium cycles. The conceptualization must necessarily be one-way:
9,192,631,770 CESIUM CYCLES (artifact + phenomenon) ) ONE SECOND (concept)
Therefore, a consistent definition of the second is:
THE SECOND IS A UNIT CORRESPONDING
TO 9,192,631,770 CESIUM CYCLES
This definition of the second does not go against the provisions of the
Conferences of 1967 and 1983, including reference to cesium frequency; but its
wording has the advantage of not using the word duration. In addition, this definition emphasizes that the international unit of time has no physical existence
In 2011, a British clock reached an accuracy of 2.3 10−16 s, which is an error of 1 s/138 million years. It illustrates the considerable role of high technology and state-of-the-art physics
The leap second between solar time and atomic time requires periodic resynchronization: if time was a physical component of nature, such questions would obviously not arise. The accuracy of measurements is determined by the accuracy of clocks; but the accuracy also depends on the rigor of the definition of the second
Terrestrial rotations, terrestrial revolutions, and the cesium oscillations, produce observable and measurable cycles, but they do not produce time; even if a misleading field effect suggests the idea of an arrow of time
We see phenomena, we do not see concepts. A concept is the result of an intellectual construction made on the basis of observations of real features of the world or phenomena: the units do not exist in nature, they are concepts
From
The Invention of Time and Space by Patrice F. Dassonville
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The extracts from the book are from various parts and chapters of the book and not in the form I have posted here although they are in sequential order
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
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Understood
Now at least the world has decided on a fixed value for the second it easier to synchronize world wide equipment which needs to be in sync with accuracy
True still a arbitrary unit but at least a agreed unit
Which puzzles me IF time was / is a fundamental of reality / physics and detectable should we not have found it by now considering how pervasive it is in our lives?
NotEinstein
Valued Senior Member
Fine, run away (again).
I have, and have not found a single photograph of a real mathematical spheroid.
Perhaps you too should do some research, because it appears there's still some very basic things about mathematical objects for you to learn.
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